Newcastle skip-salvaged ship pictures sell for £1,040

17/06/2017 Militaria & Sporting

A collection of ship pictures salvaged from a skip in Newcastle has sold for more than £1,000.John Gordon was looking for something he could use as a locker when he came across a cabinet that had been dumped on a street during an office clearout.He was given permission to take it and found it contained hundreds of pictures and documents from one of Britain's oldest shipping companies.They have been auctioned at Anderson and Garland for a total of £1,040.Mr Garland, a bus driver from Lobley Hill, said he was given permission to take the cabinet himself.

Some of the files contained blueprints of vesselsWhen he found the files inside he was told just to throw them into the skip, but decided to keep them.He said: "I looked through and saw the launch albums going back to 1927 and thought 'there's something of interest here'."Then I looked more and found more pictures and things like blueprints and details of who built the ships, who they were built for."He did some research online, and found they were from the Stephenson Clarke Shipping Company.

There were pictures from launch parties dating back to 1927"I took them to Anderson and Garland and was originally told they were worth about £200," Mr Garland said."But then they were seen by a specialist and he said 'wow, you've got something here'."Before the sale, auctioneer Fred Wyrley-Birch said: "Photographs like this are rare because time and time again collections like this end up skipped, shredded, pulped."They don't come on to the market very often."